Garden Centre Design

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Theatretech have been involved over the last 35 years in the design of retail facilities, in particular, Garden Centres.

 

Garden Centres have in many ways proved to be a revolution in retail, combining the best of what you might find in a large Department store with a specialist Nursery-style outlet. The original Garden Centre started life as a simple nursery, selling locally grown plant products from the front of a growing polytunnel. As retail sales developed, more permanent buildings were required, which were very often a development of a traditional greenhouse suitably modified to allow the public access to its sales area.

 

As the sector grew, and the range of products widened, and the sales offer expanded to fill the whole year, particularly seasonal peaks such as Christmas, Easter, Mother’s day etc, so did the length of time an average customer spent on the site, and thus the opportunity to expand into food and beverage. Before long, a simple coffee shop became a café, which then became a restaurant, many with full cooking facilities and waitress service.

 

The range of goods sold at a garden centre expanded to the point where it made more sense to derive straight income from a franchise or concession operation, to the point that Garden Centres even built their own accommodation for others to trade out of. Nowadays the larger Garden Centre operations are huge businesses, occupying prime sites on the edge of conurbations, employing several hundred staff, with fully catered restaurants and selling a range of goods that are the envy of a traditional supermarket.

 

Theatretech has worked with a number of individual business owners as well as larger chains such as Country Gardens, Wyevale and the Garden Centre Group, and are now working with Dobbies, who are based out of Edinburgh.

 

They have designed and project managed over 50 new centres, and worked in a number of countries overseas including Portugal, Spain, Germany, France, The UAE, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, the USA, as well as all over the UK.

 

The images represent a small selection of projects designed by us.